Son’s book: Reagan had Alzheimer’s while president

President Ronald Reagan suffered the “beginning stages” of Alzheimer’s disease while he was in the White House, according to a new book “My Father at 100″ by the president’s son (and longtime Seattle resident) Ron Reagan.

The junior Reagan reports that he saw evidence that his father was losing his mental acuity as early as his first term in office, which began in 1981.

The elder Reagan wasn’t diagnosed with Alzheimer’s until 1994, prompting him to hand write a moving public letter-of-farewell. The first public indication of his fragile health came at Richard Nixon’s funeral earlier that year.

Excerpts of “My Father at 100″, due for publication next Tuesday, were initially published by U.S. News & World Report’s Washington Whispers blog, and picked up Friday by the website “Politico.”

“Today, we are aware that the physiological and neurological changes associated with Alzheimer’s can be in evidence years, even decades, before identifiable symptoms arise,” Ron Reagan writes. “The question . . . of whether my father suffered from the beginning stages of Alzheimer’s while in office more or less answers itself.”

If the elder Reagan had known he was ill, he would have resigned the presidency, Ron Reagan argues.

“I’ve seen no evidence that my father (or anyone else) was aware of his medical condition while he was in office,” says the book. “Had the diagnosis been made in, say, 1987, would he have stepped down? I believe he would have.”

In an excerpt to be published Sunday in Parade, Ron Reagan reflects on initial signs that something wasn’t right with his father:

“Three years into his first term as president, I felt the first shivers of concern that something beyond mellowing was affecting my father. We’d always argued over this issue or that. He generally had the advantage of practiced talking points backed up by staff research, but I was an unabashed, occasionally effective advocate for my own positions.

“‘He told me you make him feel stupid’, my mother once shared, to my alarm. I didn’t want my father to feel stupid. If he was going to shoulder massive responsibility, I wanted him to feel on top of his game.”

Ron Reagan also makes reference to the first 1984 presidential debate, in which rambling answers by President Reagan raised – briefly – the age issue in his race against former Vice President Walter Mondale.

The junior Reagan says he “began to experience the nausea of a bad dream coming true” as he watched the debate. (President Reagan returned to form with a strong performance in his second debate with Mondale.)

“My heart sank as he floundered his way through his responses, fumbling with his notes, uncharacteristically lost for words: He look tired and bewildered,” Ron Reagan writes.

Two years later, reports the junior Reagan, his father “had been alarmed to discover, while flying over the familiar canyons north of Los Angeles, that he could no longer summon their names.”

Physicians did spot the first signs of Alzheimer’s in mid-1989, six months after Reagan left the White House, when the former president underwent brain surgery after falling from a horse.

The 100th anniversary of the birth of America’s 40th president is on February 6. He lived to the age of 93.